This special programme celebrates the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth by exploring the rich interplay between her literary imagination and her musical world. Drawing directly from Austen’s personal music books—preserved today at Jane Austen’s House and Chawton House Library—the event offers audiences a rare and intimate glimpse into the sounds that shaped her daily life and artistic sensibilities.

The recital will be enhanced with projected images of Austen’s own handwritten manuscripts, allowing listeners to experience the repertoire as Austen herself once encountered it. The evening’s selections include theatrical numbers, secular songs, and solo piano works carefully chosen from her collection, reflecting the breadth of her taste and the vitality of domestic music-making in the late Georgian period.

The programme also features a newly commissioned song cycle by Hampshire composer Chris Gardner, which sets Austen’s lesser-known poetry to music. These contemporary settings bring fresh life to her words, creating an innovative dialogue between past and present.

More than a recital, this event invites audiences to step into Austen’s world through music, text, and image, and to encounter her creative influences from a strikingly different perspective.

This event is part of the Faculty of Art's & Humanities Celebration of Jane Austen's 250th Anniversary. For other events in the series, see our page.

• Soprano: Louisa Hunter-Bradley (Royal Academy of Music London)
• Tenor: Paul Bentley-Angell (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis)
• Piano: Chris Gardner (Composer and son of leading English composer, John Gardner)